Crying in the Clouds
by capybara1
Summary: He thinks that he has lost everything and everyone. His mother, his brother, they are all gone. But does he have more left than he had originally thought? Set in alternate timeline. One-shot.


**Hello :)**

**I have deleted my other fanfic, 'A Surprising ANBU Member', because I have decided that I do not have the motivation or determination to write anything more than a one-shot. (I kinda go through phases of writing) Any other attempts at multi-chaptered fanfics will probably end up with about 3,000 words, 2 chapters, and a load of grumpy readers. (do I even have any readers? I'm not sure...) I don't feel like putting you all through that, (I find it sooooooooooo annoying when other authors do the same thing) so from now on, Capybara1 is only writing one-shots! Yay!**

**As you probably know, I'm fairly new to writing on this site (I've been lurking and reading for years!) so this is my first one-shot! :D**

**I came up with this idea in the shower (yes, I know that's weird), I hope you like it!**

**But we mustn't forget the Disclaimer: FMA is not mine.**

**Capybara1 OUT!**

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><p>All I know is that I am sobbing.<p>

I am whimpering, moaning, groaning, scratching at my eyes, salty tears are streaming down my face, and I am sobbing.

I don't know how long I have been standing in the inky shadows in the corner of the desolate room, and I am barely aware of the mourning man propped up by the wall next to me, tears of despair dismally dripping down his face, his glasses askew on his nose and his tangled hair shadowing his eyes. Eyes that I know show his horror, his sadness, and most of all; his overwhelming guilt.

I know, somewhere inside of me, that he is my father.

But my brother didn't call him a father, so should I?

My brother. My father. My mother. My teacher, my friends, my head is whirling from the memories.

Then suddenly I am taken over by the savage creature known as rage, an evil creature that hasn't broken free from it's restraints since long ago. And the creature wills me to go to the man next to me, and grab his once pristine white shirt. Now it is brown and ripped, and as I seize him, a deafening tear resounds through the damp, dirty room.

And I punch him.

I punch his overshadowed face, and his head snaps back at an alarming speed. But I don't care, the beast still has control of me, and I can feel hate running thick through my veins. I like the feeling, the power I have been given.

The man doesn't resist; and I keep beating him up, venting out my sorrow, and my rage, and my despair. I get into a rhythm; punch, drawback fist, and punch again. I cry out with loneliness, and then, slowly, I begin to feel myself returning from the clutches of hate and anger that had overpowered me, and this time I feel disgusted by what I see, by what I have done.

His once white, then brown shirt has now become a vibrant crimson. Crimson which is leeching into his jacket, trousers, and smearing on the rotten floor and cold stone wall. I can tell he is unconscious, but even as I notice this, another, solitary tear slides down his scarlet cheek, the trail it leaves glistening forlornly in the dim light.

I cannot look anymore; I turn and shuffle to the grimy window, watching the street lamps flicker outside, moths fluttering around them like bees to a hive.

But there is one thing, that, in my confused state, I notice more than anything else.

The sky is crying as well.

Rain falls with a soft pitter patter, dripping down the thin pane of glass separating me from the outside world. Then I realise; that is what I feel like. I feel as if my life before was held in place by a thin, fragile pane of glass, and now that glass has broken. The man with eyes as gold as the morning sun, the despicable man who is collapsed, unconscious next to me, has shattered that glass. And I am left with nothing.

Nothing apart from my tears, and my racked sobs in the dying light.

Soon the room will be flooded with utter darkness. That is good, because in the velvety blackness, nobody can see me, see my raw pain, or naked fear.

I will be alone.

I feel tears dripping off my nose, and I slowly drift off into a plane of blackness. I have no dreams, or nightmares. Only the total darkness that surrounds me, and shields me from my loneliness and guilt.

* * *

><p>I open my bleary eyes, blinking the now distant shadow of sleep out of them, to the sound of voices, shouting voices, concerned voices.<p>

And then the rotting door bursts open, and two figures run in to the room, panting heavily. My brain is still half asleep, and I am groggy, but soon the memories of yesterday flood back to me, drowning me, choking me. The bastard is still slumped next to me, and, to my horror, the vivid crimson colour has oozed and spread across the groaning floorboards in the night.

I edge away, tears of shame, shock, sorrow, guilt, loneliness and fear cascading down my cold, muddy face.

I back into the people who just broke in.

They look at me in surprise and relief, then two pairs of eyes, one onyx and one topaz, follow my line of sight.

And then they gasp, and push me out of the way, running over to the wall where I was resting only a moment ago. The crimson wall. The wall where the monster is. The monster that I used to call my father.

They kneel next to him, taking in the horrible sight. And then thy start shouting at each other. I am so deeply caught up in the fog of memories from my childhood, that I have no inkling of what they are saying, the competing sounds muffled to a whisper in the distance.

But then someone grabs me, and all I can see is bright tears falling like diamonds from those onyx eyes, before the man shakes me, hard.

I hit the wall with a dull thud, and pain shoots through my head like fire, burning away the little sanity I still have left.

The woman gasps as I slide down the stained wall, and gets up from her position next to the monster to reach for the one who flung me.

My head feels like it is about to explode, pain shooting through me like lava, and I can feel a dark crimson liquid dripping sluggishly down my face. The world starts to fade.

I welcome the blackness.

* * *

><p>My head feels as though a swarm of wasps are inside and trying to break free, and I feel more salty tears slide down my cheeks as I start to regain my hearing and my memories. The world is still black, but I find it comforting. Hushed voices penetrate my muddled mind, whispering sorrowful words of comfort, I think. I can not be sure, but the crisp rustle of sheets under me suggest that I am in a hospital.<p>

I attempt to open my eyes to see.

The voices stop.

I can feel the crust of weariness which has formed on my eyelids crack, and a sliver of light appears in my vision.

I blink a couple of times, and my sight begins to return to me. There are three blurry shapes leaning over me, two of which seem to be blue.

I blink again, then press myself into the bed, away from the man who I now realise is in military uniform. Somewhere in the mists of my mind, I know who he is, but all I can recall at the moment is that he was the one who threw me last night. He has a sour expression on his face; a contrast to the concerned expression of the blond woman next to him, and the tired look of the ragged man behind the couple.

I don't want to admit it, but I am scared, terrified. I back up, and another wave of pain courses through my head. I groan and clutch it, and, to my surprise, a fresh white bandage is wrapped neatly around it. The woman frowns in concern.

But the pain keeps rolling in, and soon I become tired of surfing the waves that course through me, causing my body to become racked with shaking.

I fall back onto the sheets and drift into a fitful slumber, ever wary of the onyx eyed, scowling man who had attacked me last night.

Everything else floats past my mind, as I concentrate on containing both this new fear, and the tears of pain and regret which threaten to spill over.

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><p>I am in the middle of nothingness; everything is white.<p>

My brother, my mother and that bastard standing in front to me. With a start, I realise that my mother is fading, and I run towards them, but I can not seem to get any closer, and, with every step I take, my mother fades more and more.

I cry out to her, wanting to protect her now like we failed to do all those years ago, but it is no use; she is still smiling her heart warming smile, but now blood is dripping down her chin, staining her clothes and the edges of my vision with a deep crimson.

And then she disappears, and black replaces the red.

Now it is my brother who is leaving me, swirling tendrils of black seizing him and dragging him away from me. Somehow, I know that if he disappears, I will never see him again, so I double my efforts, sprinting as hard as my weak legs can to catch up with him.

But it is no use; now he is gone as well.

Only my father is left, staring at his shoes, a solitary strand of golden hair drooping over his face.

He looks up, and I am shocked to see a heart wrenching expression of pure guilt etched onto his once handsome features. He is not handsome anymore; his cheeks are sunken, and his eyes are dull. He looks, I realise, like a broken man.

I wake up with a start.

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><p>The pain has been reduced to no more than a dull ache at the base of my skull, and I am warm, and cozy. I do not want to wake up; I want to lie here, in this comfortable bed for ever. But I think that the man is still here; the one with the raven hair; the one who threw me; the one I now realise is him. The one my brother hated.<p>

I realise that I hate him too.

Him and his fire.

Why wasn't he there when we needed him?

So with an enormous effort, I open my eyes and sit up. I swing my legs over the edge of my bed, rip the bandage from around my forehead, and, finally, I notice where I am.

I came here before, with my brother. I was wrong; it is not a hospital.

It is a house.

The house of a doctor, a doctor who treated two friends of mine. One of them lost an arm. The other I carried after she passed out. I can not remember what happened to her, or her panda.

I hope they are both safe in Xing.

With this thought in mind, I take another look at the room I am in.

Nobody is around, and the dim lights flicker feebly.

What happened yesterday is a mere smudge in the past; I have almost accepted it. Almost. In the murky depths of my heart I know I never will. Because what happened yesterday is too dreadful to ever forget; I know that I will be replaying the scenes in my head like my favourite playlist until the day I die. There will be no escape. It is almost better that way; I know that I will never make the same mistakes again.

I can't afford to.

I stretch my legs, and stand. Staggering, I grip the bed post to right myself, and, after slipping on the grimy clothes I was wearing yesterday, I start walking, placing one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

After what seems like eternity, I reach the peeling door.

Into the landing, past a window, past another door, I can hear voices.

Then I run.

But then I reach the last door in the corridor, which is slightly agar.

My curiosity gets the better of me, and I push it very gently. It opens with a creak, and I step inside.

There is another bed; I think that it is the doctors'. But lying between the crisp sheets it not the kind- hearted man; is that bastard.

My father.

He is no longer covered in that awful red, his cracked wire glasses are by the side of the bed, and a single strand of hair is draped across his face.

I am overwhelmed by pure, undiluted guilt.

Even after all that he did, to me and my brother, even after what happened yesterday, he is still my father.

A dreadful man, a lying man, a man who left us and didn't even come to mom's funeral when she died, a monster.

But he is still my father.

I hate every fibre in his miserable body, but he is still my father.

And yet I have done this to him.

In a stupid fit of rage, I have done this to him.

He is all I have left, excluding the corrupted military, and yet I have done this to him.

I am appalled at my self; I can not work out what came over me last night.

I realise now that it is no wonder that the Colonel threw me as far as he did, as hard as he did.

I am a coward who does not want to explain myself, and for the second time in ten minutes, I run.

I run away from my problems, into the crowded street, into the foggy air of Central City.

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><p>I have no idea where I am running; My legs go where ever my muddled brain takes me, the rest of my body following.<p>

After what seems like hours, I stop, not because I want to, but because my body can't keep it up.

At least, I think, it is quieter here.

And it is; I have ended up in a square, and I am alone. The only company I have is the the occasional passer by, all of whom walk briskly on, heads bowed, shoulders hunched. It is a feeble attempt at protection from the harsh elements.

I slide down the building behind me and hit the filthy pavement with a dull thud.

And then something strange happens.

A small ginger tom cat struts up to me, tail and head both raised high. He is thin, and I can see the ribs sticking out from under his matted, damp fur. I look down at my own body. I am, I realise, like him. My brother's old and battle worn clothes are hanging loosely off me, my long, golden hair tangled and filthy. I'm not really that surprised; we had expected as much.

I am startled back into reality by my new feline friend. He puts his paws onto my lap and looks up at me as if to ask if I am alright with it.

I nod to him, feeling slightly silly, but the next second he is on my lap, curled up into a small ball of warmth, and purring loudly, the deep sound vibrating through my head.

I feel as though someone has just shined a small beacon of hope into the darkness surrounding me.

It is exactly what I know need.

I have always loved cats of all shapes and sizes, and, as I wind my thin hands through this one's grimy fur, I feel a sense of peace come over me as it hasn't for a long while.

I can not keep it in any longer; I feel my pain slide down my cheeks in the form of salt water, and as I let loose my first aching sob, the heavens open with a new found force, and stinging droplets fall onto my face.

Soon I am sitting in the middle of a downpour.

I stay like that for hours, my body racked with sobs, tears sliding down my cheeks, the chilling rain soaking through everything I am wearing until I am sodden, freezing, and utterly depressed. The cat has stopped purring.

I have run out of tears; I have no more left to cry. The clouds, however, are still weeping wholeheartedly, fat drops cascading down with the power of a waterfall.

I absently stroke the cat, running my fingers through it's sopping ginger fur.

I lean back, tilting my dripping head up to look at the thin, grey clouds. The crying clouds.

I lean back, and I wonder what happens when you die.

I wonder if it is possible that the souls go to the sky, if our loved ones really do look down on us like people say they do.

My brother would disagree. He would say that our souls go to the gate, that our bodies decompose in the cold, hard ground, and that our life force is used as energy for alchemy.

But I do not believe in alchemy, or the gate, or the philosophers stone anymore. I can't put my trust in science, or equivalent exchange. It let me down when I needed it the most, and left me with nothing apart from a scrawny, wet alley cat and the rain. If there is such thing as equivalent exchange, what did I get in return for my brother?

Nothing. I got nothing.

So now I am sat in a puddle, my clothes dripping, a muddy cat on my lap, and I am looking at the clouds.

I am looking at the miserable grey clouds, wondering about death.

Have I finally lost my sanity?

I don't think I have.

And then I think, if souls go there when people die, surely when it rains, it is just our loved ones crying for us, regretting the fact that they never got a chance to say goodbye to their daughter, or tell their husband how much they loved him.

Is my mother up there?

She was always too strong to cry, always smiling her dazzling smile. She would be the sun that is now peeping out from behind the dark clouds. She is the burning sun, keeping us all alive as we struggle on through this hard life. She is the sun, that, as I think this, is offering her rays of light to every human and beast on this tiny, insignificant planet of ours.

My brother is another matter. He was always so quick to anger, so quick to display his emotions to everyone and anyone he met. He, I think fondly, would be the storm. He is probably thinking about how he left his little brother, and how he hates his father. But at least he is with Mom now.

He is not alone.

I am so caught up in my thoughts that I do not notice the woman approaching. Her long, blond hair is in a bun, held in place by a simple black hair grip.

I have calmed down enough by now to know who she is.

Her topaz eyes frown at me in a concerned manner, but then I smile at her; it feels wrong, like my face is splitting in two, but it seems to make her happy. I know that she can see I have been crying; I am well aware of my red and puffy eyes, and the glistening tear tracks in the morning light.

The sun has come out now, and as she perches next to me, her face is illuminated. Her face, which shows nothing but genuine concern and a fair degree of relief as well, is illuminated by my mother's rays. It is a wonderful thought.

She doesn't try to talk to me; she knows what I have been through these last few days, why I wanted to be alone, and she doesn't try to push me into an uncomfortable conversation, for which I am grateful.

After about an hour, I decide to talk. I can not hold it in any longer; and I will have to tell the story at some point; so, I think, why not now?

I take a deep, oxygenating breath, and let it all out in a long, weary sigh.

And then I tell the woman with the topaz eyes what happened. I tell her everything.

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><p>She doesn't question me when I tell her how the battle began, how the Fuhrer lured us in, how the soldiers swarmed us and we were forced to fight with every bit of skill the three of us possesed.<p>

She doesn't interrupt when I described how my father used his philosopher's stone to return me and my brother's bodies to normal, despite the fact that we begged him not to. He caught us when we were fighting, there was nothing we could do about it, and we were both mad at him for it. He defeated the entire purpose of our goal; to get our original bodies back without hurting any more people.

I do not even want to think how many sacrifices were used to create such a horrendous object.

There was another problem with my father's plan.

I was in absolutely no condition to fight; my brother was forced to protect me.

I hated the feeling of helplessness which I remember overwhelmed me at the time.

He was everywhere; punching, kicking, using his alchemy in ways which I didn't even realise were possible, all in an attempt to protect me.

I hated every second of it.

It went on and on, like a never ending cycle. Both he and my father combined must have finished off at least several hundred soldiers, but they kept on coming. It was like an awful nightmare, blood slick on every surface.

But then there was a surprise attack. I could see it, but I couldn't move in time.

He could see it too.

I blinked, and a light splatter of blood flicked my face.

It was the first thing apart from the cold, gritty ground I had felt in my new body.

My brother's blood, dripping down my face.

The soldier responsible fell to the ground as my father finished him off, but the blade was still there, the cold, unforgiving steel biting into my brother's flesh.

He toppled as if in slow motion, my father catching him in his grimy arms as he hit the ground. I couldn't see the bastard's face, his eyes shadowed.

My brother turned to me, the movement painstakingly slow. He raised his newly returned right hand to me, smiled weakly, a thin trail of crimson slipping down his chin.

His eyes closed.

His hand hit the floor.

His chest stopped moving, his heart no longer beating.

I leaned in close, tugging the weapon out of his torso with a soft whimper, and dropping it to the rough, hard ground.

A diamond tear slid down my father's face, but I couldn't feel pity for the man.

He had killed my brother.

Or had it been me?

I staggered to my feet, and ran as fast as I could.

I wasn't aiming for anywhere.

I was attempting to escape, to run away from my emotions.

I was vaguely aware of the bastard following my uneven footsteps, just a voice penetrated the despair that surrounded me.

I know now that it was the Lieutenant calling.

She had found my brother.

Did she blame me?

I ran until I found an desolate, dingy, damp room.

I slumped against the wall and stayed like that.

Listening to the clouds cry.

Crying with my brother.

I hope he enjoyed the little time he had with his original body. He deserved it.

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><p><strong>Was that a bit dark? I had fun writing it anyways :D<strong>

**The cat was based on one of my own cuties! (just so you know, he is not an alley cat...) ^.^**

**I got the last 3-in-1 FMA book for Xmas (Hope you all got what you wanted!) and I cried and cried and cried. It was so touching!**

**You know the drill: REVIEW!**

**Capybara1 OUT!**


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